The present disclosure generally relates to the field of lockout-tagout (LOTO) systems. The present disclosure relates more specifically to systems and methods of creating, administrating, assigning, and managing LOTO procedures and safety compliance procedures.
The locking out and tagging out of equipment are generally subject to strict LOTO procedures, which are periodically reviewed. There is typically a separate LOTO procedure for each piece of equipment subject to OSHA LOTO regulations (LOTO equipment). A particular piece of equipment may have an associated LOTO pr checklist showing the step or steps of its respective LOTO procedure. Some machines are complex in the sense that they utilize more than one type of energy, e.g., electrical, pneumatic, hydraulic, water, gas, chemical or coolant, and/or steam, that must be locked out before deemed safe to proceed with maintenance. Workers might be authorized to work on all of the LOTO energy types or on only a subset of them, e.g., a worker might only be permitted to work on electrical energy LOTO procedure steps. LOTO procedures are typically implemented using paper-based systems. For example, a worker needing to work on a piece of LOTO equipment might take a printed LOTO procedure checklist for that specific piece of equipment to the location of that piece of equipment and physically check off each step on the LOTO procedure checklist that worker is permitted to perform, perhaps in turn with workers authorized to perform LOTO procedure steps involving different energy types.